Redneck1 wrote:
Is there any way to get the number of usable cores down to four instead of eight, like say disable/turn off 2 physical cores?
On an individual process basis via Task Manager, Details tab, right click and select Affinity and select the cores available for that process.
Disabling odd numbered cores might disable hyperthreaded cores, at worst you could disable all but 1 core, but I don't know if it actually disables the hyperthreaded core matching the single enabled core. If you have an app that won't run if the hyperthreaded core is enabled it would be a good test.
Inheritance might help too, I haven't tried it, but you could set the affinity for a process that starts other processes and see if that will start the new processes with the same Affinity settings.
You can also set Priority as well.
Let us know if this trick helps, and how you used it 🙂
Redneck1 wrote:
Steam blocked the cmd command, setting the affinity on the steam.exe also has no effect
Redneck1, here is how to get a Steam game to start on 1 core 🙂
Exit Steam if it is already running.
Start Steam on 1 core with this cmdline in a cmd window:
cmd.exe /c start "Steam" /affinity 1 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe"
Steam.exe is started on 1 core, but SteamService.exe is started on all cores, so I used the TaskManager GUI to set it to 1 core.
Then I started Empire Total War from inside Steam, and verified Steam started it with 1 core 🙂
From the link you posted on how to do cmdline affinity, you can change the cores used at start to see if even/odd cores, or 4 cores vs 1 core works.
Let us know if that gets Timeshift working 🙂
Update: I verified that if I use the TaskManager GUI to set both Steam.exe and SteamService.exe to only 1 core, starting a game from inside Steam starts the game on 1 core.
So you don't need to go through the hassle of using the cmdline to start Steam.exe and then use the GUI to set SteamService.exe to 1 core with the GUI, just do both through the GUI after Steam is started.
FYI, I click the "All Processors" box to deselect all CPU's, then click on CPU 0 to Select 1 core.
Why does it say "All Processors" instead of "All Cores" and CPU's instead of Core's? 🙂
You said Timeshift works on 4 cores, I am not sure which Affinity setiing will work, setting Steam.exe/SteamService.exe to use CPU 0,1,2,3 or CPU 0,2,4,6 or CPU 1,3,5,7 - so give those choices a try, after trying CPU 0 for 1 core first
hmscott wrote:
Redneck1, here is how to get a Steam game to start on 1 core 🙂
Exit Steam if it is already running.
Start Steam on 1 core with this cmdline in a cmd window:
cmd.exe /c start "Steam" /affinity 1 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe"
Steam.exe is started on 1 core, but SteamService.exe is started on all cores, so I used the TaskManager GUI to set it to 1 core.
Then I started Empire Total War from inside Steam, and verified Steam started it with 1 core 🙂
From the link you posted on how to do cmdline affinity, you can change the cores used at start to see if even/odd cores, or 4 cores vs 1 core works.
Let us know if that gets Timeshift working 🙂
Update: I verified that if I use the TaskManager GUI to set both Steam.exe and SteamService.exe to only 1 core, starting a game from inside Steam starts the game on 1 core.
So you don't need to go through the hassle of using the cmdline to start Steam.exe and then use the GUI to set SteamService.exe to 1 core with the GUI, just do both through the GUI after Steam is started.
FYI, I click the "All Processors" box to deselect all CPU's, then click on CPU 0 to Select 1 core.
Why does it say "All Processors" instead of "All Cores" and CPU's instead of Core's? 🙂
You said Timeshift works on 4 cores, I am not sure which Affinity setiing will work, setting Steam.exe/SteamService.exe to use CPU 0,1,2,3 or CPU 0,2,4,6 or CPU 1,3,5,7 - so give those choices a try, after trying CPU 0 for 1 core first
It says CPU's and none of the combos worked. I tried all the compatibility options, and messing with the starting resolution, got nothing.
I wish there was a way to get in touch with a ASUS ROG Representative to voice the whole "locked BIOS" issue, for a company that is all about taking the equipment given and tweaking it to fit the user or go for max performance, this locked BIOS is pretty contrary to values set forth by the company.
